The colony was founded by the owners of the Massachusetts Bay Company, which included investors in the failed Dorchester Company, which had in 1623 established a short-lived settlement on Cape Ann. The second attempt, the Massachusetts Bay Colony begun in 1628, was successful, with about 20,000 people migrating to New England in the 1630s. The population was strongly Puritan, and its governance was dominated by a small group of leaders who were strongly influenced by Puritan religious leaders. Although its governors were elected, the electorate were limited to freemen, who had been examined for their religious views and formally admitted to their church and also to their houses with self-control. As a consequence, the colonial leadership exhibited intolerance to other religious views, including Anglican, Quaker, and Baptist theologies.

Although the colonists initially had decent relationships with the local native populations, frictions arose over cultural differences, which were further exacerbated by Dutch colonial expansion. These led first to the Pequot War (1636–1638), and then to King Philip's War (1675–1678), after which most of the natives in southern New England had been pacified, killed, or driven away.

Map depicting tribal distribution in southern New England, circa 1600; the political boundaries shown are modern

Prior to the arrival of Europeans on the eastern shore of New England, the area around Massachusetts Bay was the territory of several Algonquian-speaking tribes, including the Massachusett, Nauset, and Wampanoag. The Pennacooks occupied the Merrimack River valley to the north, and the Nipmuc, Pocumtuc, and Mahican, occupied the western lands of present-day Massachusetts, although some of those tribes were under tribute to the Mohawk, who were expanding aggressively from present-day upstate New York.[1] The total Indian population in 1620 has been estimated to be 7,000[2] with the population of New England at 15–18,000.[3] This number was significantly larger as late as 1616; in later years contemporary chroniclers interviewed Indians who described a major pestilence that killed between one and two thirds of the population. The land use patterns of the natives included plots cleared for agricultural purposes, and woodland territories for the hunting of game. Land divisions between the tribes were well understood.[2]

Early in the 17th century a variety of European explorers, including Samuel de Champlain and John Smith, charted the area.[4] Plans for the first permanent British settlements on the east coast of North America began in 1606. On April 10, 1606 King James I of England (James VI of Scotland) granted a charter forming two joint stock companies. Neither of these corporations was given a name by this charter, but the territories over which they were respectively authorized to settle, and if settled, to govern, were expressly named as the "first Colony" (fourth paragraph of charter) and "second Colony" (fifth paragraph of charter). Under this charter the "first Colony" and the "second Colony" each were to be ruled by a "Council" composed of 13 individuals. The charter provided for an additional council of 13 persons to have overarching responsibility for the combined enterprise. Although no name was given to either the company or council governing the respective colonies, the council governing the whole was named "Council of Virginia." (Notwithstanding that the 1606 charter did not assign names to the regional companies or councils, the April 4, 1629 charter granted by King Charles I erroneously asserted that the 1606 charter had given the council governing the "second Colony" the name "Council established at Plymouth in the county of Devon.") The "first Colony" ranged from the 34th to 41st degree latitude north; the "second Colony" ranged from the 38th to 45th degree latitude. (Note that the "first Colony" and the "second Colony" overlapped. The 1629 charter of Charles I asserted that the second Colony ranged from 40th to 48th degrees north latitude, which reduces the overlap.) The investors appointed to govern over any settlements in the "first Colony" were from London; the investors appointed to govern over any settlements in the "second Colony" were from the "Town of Plimouth in the County of Devon."[citation needed] The London Company proceeded to establish Jamestown.[5] The Plymouth Company under the guidance of Sir Ferdinando Gorges covered the more northern area, including present-day New England, and established the Sagadahoc Colony in 1607 in present-day Maine.[6] The experience proved exceptionally difficult for the 120 settlers, however, and the surviving colonists abandoned the colony after only one year.[7] Gorges noted that "there was no more speech of settling plantations in those parts" for a number of years.[8] English ships continued to come to the New England area for fishing and trade with the Indians.[9]

In November 1620, a group of Pilgrims, seeking to preserve their cultural identity, established Plymouth Colony just to the south of Massachusetts Bay.[10] Their settlement was joined in 1622 and 1623 by short-lived settlements at nearby Wessagusset (present-day Weymouth), whose settlers either joined the Plymouth colony, returned to England, or settled in small outposts elsewhere on Massachusetts Bay.[11]

In 1623, the Plymouth Council for New England (successor to the Plymouth Company) established a small fishing village at Cape Ann under the supervision of the Dorchester Company, with Thomas Gardner as its overseer. This company was originally organized through the efforts of the Puritan minister John White (1575–1648) of Dorchester, in the English county of Dorset. White has been called "the father of the Massachusetts Colony" because of his influence in establishing this settlement and despite the fact that he never emigrated.[16] The Cape Ann settlement was not profitable, and the financial backers of the Dorchester Company terminated their support by the end of 1625. Their settlement at present-day Gloucester was abandoned, but a few settlers, including Roger Conant, remained in the area, establishing a settlement a little further south, near the village of the Naumkeag tribe.[17]

Archbishop William Laud, a favorite advisor of King Charles I and a dedicated Anglican, sought to suppress the religious practices of Puritans and other nonconforming beliefs in England. The persecution of many Puritans in the 1620s led them to believe religious reform would not be possible while Charles was king, and many decided to seek a new life in the New World.[18]

John White continued to seek funding for a colony. On 19 March 1627/8,[19] the Council for New England issued a land grant to a new group of investors that included a few holdovers from the Dorchester Company. The land grant was for territory between the Charles and Merrimack Rivers, including a three-mile (4.8 km) buffer to the north of the Merrimack and to the south of the Charles, that extended from "the Atlantick and westerne sea and ocean on the east parte, to the South sea on the west parte."[20] The company that the grant was sold to was styled "The New England Company for a Plantation in Massachusetts Bay".[21] The company elected Matthew Cradock as its first governor, and immediately began organizing provisions and recruiting settlers. The company sent about 100 new settlers and provisions in 1628 to join Conant, led by Governor's Assistant John Endecott, one of the grantees.[22] The next year, Naumkeag was renamed Salem and fortified by another 300 settlers, led by Rev. Francis Higginson, one of the first ministers of the settlement.[23] The first winters were difficult, with colonists struggling against disease and starvation, resulting in a significant number of deaths.[24][25]

Concerned about the legality of conflicting land claims given to several companies including the New England Company to the still little-known territories of the New World, and because of the increasing number of Puritans that wanted to join the company, the company leaders sought a Royal Charter for the colony. Charles granted the new charter on 4 March 1628/9,[26] superseding the land grant and establishing a legal basis for the new English colony at Massachusetts. It was not apparent that Charles knew the Company was meant to support the Puritan emigration, and he was likely left to assume it was purely for business purposes, as was the custom. The charter omitted a significant clause – the location for the annual stockholders' meeting. After Charles dissolved Parliament in 1629, the company's directors met to consider the possibility of moving the company's seat of governance to the colony. This was followed by the Cambridge Agreement later that year, in which a group of investors agreed to emigrate and work to buy out others who would not. The Massachusetts Bay Colony became the first English chartered colony whose board of governors did not reside in England. This independence helped the settlers to maintain their Puritan religious practices with very little oversight by the king, Archbishop Laud, and the Anglican Church. The charter remained in force for 55 years, when, as a result of colonial insubordination with trade, tariff and navigation laws, Charles II revoked it in 1684.[27]

A flotilla of ships (sometimes known as the Winthrop Fleet) sailed from England beginning in April 1630. The fleet, which began arriving at Salem in June, carried more than 700 colonists, Governor John Winthrop, and the colonial charter.[28] Winthrop is reputed to have delivered his famous "City upon a Hill" sermon either before or during the voyage.[29]

The advent of the English Civil War in the early 1640s brought a halt to major migration, and a significant number of men returned to England to fight in the war. Massachusetts authorities were sympathetic to the Parliamentary cause, and had generally positive relationships with the governments of the English Commonwealth and The Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. The colony's economy began to diversify in the 1640s, as the fur trading, lumber, and fishing industries found markets in Europe and the West Indies, and the colony's shipbuilding industry developed. Combined with the growth of a generation of people who were born in the colony, the rise of a merchant class began to slowly change the political and cultural landscape of the colony, even though its governance continued to be dominated by relatively conservative Puritans.

Colonial support for the Commonwealth presented problems upon the restoration of Charles II to the throne in 1660. Charles sought to extend royal influence over the colonies, which Massachusetts, more than the other colonies, resisted. For example, the colonial government repeatedly refused requests by Charles and his agents to allow the Church of England to become established, and it resisted adherence to the Navigation Acts, laws that constrained colonial trade.

All of the New England colonies were ravaged by King Philip's War (1675–1676), when the Indians of southern New England rose up against the colonists and were decisively defeated, although at great cost in life to the colonies. The Massachusetts frontier was particularly hard hit, with several communities in the Connecticut and Swift Rivers valleys being abandoned. By the end of the war, most of the Indian population of southern New England had been pacified, killed, or driven away.

Following the English Restoration in 1660, matters of colonial administration drew the king's attention. Massachusetts in particular was reluctant to admit the king had any sort of authority to control its governance.[31] This led to crises in the 1660s and late 1670s in which steps were first planned, and then executed in England to vacate the colonial charter. In 1681 the Lords of Trade, who had decided for a variety of reasons to consolidate the New England colonies, issued quo warranto writs for the charters of several North American colonies, including Massachusetts.[32] The Massachusetts writ was never served for technical reasons, and the charter was not formally vacated until the chancery court issued a scire facias writ formally annulling the charter on June 18, 1684.[33] The proceedings were arranged so that the time for the colonial authorities to defend the charter expired before they even learned of the event.[34]

From 1686, the colony's territory was administratively unified by James II of England with the other New England colonies in the Dominion of New England. The dominion was governed by Sir Edmund Andros without any local representation beyond hand-picked councilors, and was extremely unpopular in New England. After the 1688 Glorious Revolution in England, Massachusetts authorities conspired to have Andros arrested in April 1689, and then reestablished government under the forms of the vacated charter. However, dissenters from the Puritan rule correctly noted that the government lacked a proper constitutional foundation, and some of its actions were resisted on that basis. The years from 1689 to 1692 were also difficult ones, since the colony was at the forefront of King William's War, and its frontier communities were ravaged by attacks organized in New France and conducted by French and Indian raiding parties.

In the early years of the colony, life could be quite difficult. Many colonists lived in fairly crude structures, including dugouts, wigwams, and dirt-floor huts made using wattle and daub construction. In later years construction methods improved, and houses began to be sheathed in clapboard, with thatch or plank roofs and wooden chimneys.[37] Wealthier individuals would extend their house by adding a leanto on the back, which allowed for a larger kitchen (possibly with a brick or stone chimney including an oven), additional rooms, and a sleeping loft. These houses were the precursors to what is now called the saltbox style of architecture.[38] Interiors became more elaborate in later years, with plaster walls, wainscoting, and potentially expensive turned woodwork in the most expensive homes.[39]

Colonists arriving after the first wave found that the early towns did not have room for them. Seeking land of their own, groups of families would petition the government for land on which to establish a new town; the government would typically allow the group's leaders to select the land. These grants were typically about 40 square miles (10,000 ha), and were located sufficiently near other towns to facilitate defense and social support. The group leaders would also be responsible for acquiring native title to the lands they selected.[40] By this means the colony expanded into the interior, spawning settlements in adjacent territories as well.[41]

The land within a town would be divided by communal agreement, usually allocating by methods that originated in England. Outside a town center land would be allocated for farming, some of which might be held communally. Farmers with large plots of land might build a house near their properties on the outskirts of the town.[42] A town center that was well laid out would be fairly compact, with a tavern, school, possibly some small shops, and a meeting house that was used for civic and religious functions.[39] The meeting house would be the center of the town's political and religious life. Church services might be held for several hours on Wednesday and all day Sunday. Puritans did not observe annual holidays, especially Christmas, which they said had pagan roots. Annual town meetings would be held at the meeting house, generally in May, to elect the town's representatives to the general court and to transact other community business. Towns often had a village green, used for outdoor celebrations and activities like military exercises of the town's trainband or militia.

Many of the early colonists who migrated from England came with some or all of their family.[43] It was expected that individuals would marry fairly young and begin producing offspring. Infant mortality rates were comparatively low as were instances of childhood death.[44] Men who lost their wives often remarried fairly quickly, especially if they had children needing care. Older widows would also sometimes marry for financial security. It was also normal for older widowed parents to live with one of their children. Due to the Puritan perception of marriage as a civil union, divorce was not entirely uncommon and could be pursued by both genders.[45]

Sexual activity was expected to be confined to marriage. Sex outside of marriage was considered fornication if neither partner was married, and adultery if one or both were married to someone else. Fornication was generally punished by fines and pressure to marry; a woman who gave birth to an illegitimate child could also be fined. Adultery was a more serious crime, and was, along with rape, punishable by death. Rape, however, required more than one witness, and was therefore rarely prosecuted. (This had the unfortunate consequence of making ongoing domestic abuse difficult if not impossible to remedy.) Sexual activity between men was called sodomy, and was also punishable by death.[46]

Within the marriage, the husband was typically responsible for supplying the family's financial needs, although it was not uncommon for women to work in the fields and to perform some sort of home labor (for example, spinning thread or weaving cloth) to supplement the family income. Women were almost exclusively responsible for seeing to the welfare of the children.

Children were baptized at the local meeting house within a week of being born. The mother was usually not present because she was still recovering from the birth, and the child's name was usually chosen by the father. Names were propagated within the family, and names would be reused when infants died. If an adult died without issue, his (or her) name could be carried on by the naming practices of his siblings.

Most children received some form of schooling, something the colony's founders believed to be important for forming a proper relationship with God. Towns were obligated to provide education for their children, which was usually satisfied by hiring a teacher of some sort. The quality of these instructors varied, from minimally-educated local people to Harvard-educated ministers.

The structure of the colonial government evolved over the lifetime of the charter. The colonial charter was one designed for the management of a corporation, and the needs of the colonial government did not always fit well into this model. The result was that the government began with a corporate organization that included a governor and deputy governor, a general court of its shareholders (known as "freemen"), and a council of assistants similar to a board of directors,[47] and ended with a governor and deputy governor, a bicameral legislature that included a representative lower house, and a body of freemen, a subset of the colony's adult inhabitants, who were authorized to vote in elections. The council of assistants sat as the upper house of the legislature, and served as the judicial court of last appeal.

Massachusetts Bay Colony, 300th Anniversary Issue of 1930

The charter granted the general court the authority to elect officers and to make laws for the colony. Its first meeting in America was held in October 1630, but was attended by only eight freemen.[47] They formed the first council of assistants, and voted (contrary to the terms of the charter) that the governor and deputy should be elected by them, from their number.[48] This was modified in the next session of the general court, in which the governor and deputy were to be elected by the general court.[49]

An additional 116 settlers were admitted to the general court as freemen in 1631, but most of the governing power, as well as the judicial power, remained with the council of assistants.[50] They also enacted a law specifying that only those men who "are members of some of the churches" in the colony were eligible to become freemen and gain the vote.[48] This restriction on the franchise would not be liberalized until after the English Restoration.[49] The process by which individuals became members of one of the colony's churches involved a detailed questioning by the church elders of their beliefs and religious experiences; as a result, only individuals whose religious views accorded with those of the church leadership were likely to become members, and gain the ability to vote in the colony.[51] After a protest over the imposition of taxes by a meeting of the council of assistants, the general court ordered each town to send two representatives, known as deputies, to meet with the court to discuss matters of taxation.[52]

In 1634, questions of governance and representation arose again, and some deputies demanded to see the charter, which the assistants had kept hidden from public view. The deputies learned of the provisions that the general court should make all laws, and that all freemen should be members of the general court. They then demanded that the charter be enforced to the letter, which Governor Winthrop pointed out was impractical given the growing number of freemen. The parties reached a compromise, and agreed that the general court would be made up of two deputies elected by each town.[52] The 1634 election resulted in the election of Dudley as governor, and the general court proceeded to reserve for itself a large number of powers, including those of taxation, distribution of land, and the admission of freemen.[53]

The transformation was complete: a trading company had become a (somewhat) representative democracy. In 1642 there arose a legal case that brought about the separation of the council of assistants into a separate, upper house of the general court. The case, involving a widow's lost pig, had been overturned by the general court, but the assistants, who had sat in judicial decision on the case, voted as a body to veto the general court's act.[54] The consequence of the ensuing debate was that the general court in 1644 voted that the council of assistants would sit and deliberate separately from the general court (they had until then sat together), the concurrence of both bodies being required for the passage of legislation. Judicial appeals were to be decided by a joint session, since otherwise the assistants would be in the position to veto attempts to overturn their own decisions.[55] As a group of emigrants had bought all the Massachusetts Bay Company's stock and brought the Charter to America in 1630, neither the English king nor Parliament or an English company exerted any influence in Massachusetts Bay Colony.[56] So it was, for some decades, de facto a republic (self-rule). It also practiced separation of powers.

In 1641, the colony formally adopted its first code of laws, the Massachusetts Body of Liberties.[57] written or compiled by Nathaniel Ward.[58] This documented consisted of 100 civil and criminal laws, specifying required behavior and punishments by appeal to the Judeo-Christian social sanctions recorded in the Bible.[59] These laws formed the nucleus of colonial legislation until independence, and contained some provisions that were fairly advanced for the time. Among these provisions were the ideas of equal protection and double jeopardy that were later enshrined in the United States Constitution.[58]

Many relatively trivial actions were frowned upon, and on occasion led to criminal prosecution. These included smoking tobacco, abusing your mother-in-law, profane dancing, kissing, pulling hair, sleeping during church services, riding behind two men (a woman named Lydia was convicted of this), playing cards, and engaging in any number of activities on the Sabbath.[60]

The colony's council of assistants sat as the final court of appeal, and as the principal court for criminal issues of "life, limb, or banishment" and civil issues where the damages exceeded £100.[59] Lesser offenses were heard in county courts or by commissioners appointed for hearing minor disputes. The lower courts were also responsible for issuing licenses and for matters such as probate. Juries were authorized to decide questions of both fact and law, although the court was able to decide in the event that a jury failed to reach a decision.[61] Sentences for offenses included fines and corporal punishments such as whipping and sitting in the stocks, with the punishments of banishment from the colony and death by hanging being reserved for the most serious offenses.[62] Evidence was sometimes based on hearsay and superstition; for example, the "ordeal of touch" (in which someone accused of murder is forced to touch the dead body; if blood appears the accused is deemed guilty) was used in 1646 to convict and execute a woman accused of murdering her newborn child.[63] Bodies of individuals hanged for piracy were sometimes gibbeted (publicly displayed) on harbor islands visible to seagoing vessels. (Nixes Mate, now little more than a granite outcrop, was one such site, where pirate William Fly's body was displayed.)[64]

The colonial leadership was the most active in New England in the persecution of Quakers. In 1660, one of the most notable victims of their religious intolerance was English QuakerMary Dyer who was hanged in Boston for repeatedly defying a law banning Quakers from the colony.[67] In part because of the colony's hanging of her and three other Quakers (collectively known as the Boston martyrs), King Charles II in 1661 explicitly forbade Massachusetts from executing anyone for professing Quakerism.[68]

In 1643, Massachusetts Bay joined Plymouth Colony, Connecticut Colony, and New Haven Colony in the New England Confederation, a loose coalition organized primarily to coordinate military and administrative matters between the Puritan colonies.[69] It was most active in the 1670s during King Philip's War.[70] (New Hampshire had not yet been organized as a separate province, and both it and Rhode Island were excluded because they were not Puritan.)[71]

In the early years of the colony, it was highly dependent on the import of staples from England, and was supported by the investments of a number of wealthy immigrants. Certain businesses, notably shipbuilding, fisheries, and the fur and lumber trades, quickly got started. As early as 1632 ships built in the colony began trading, either with other colonies, England, or foreign ports in Europe. By 1660 the colony's merchant fleet was estimated at 200 ships, and by the end of the century its shipyards were estimated to turn out several hundred ships annually.[72] In the early years the fleet carried principally fish, to destinations from the West Indies to Europe.[73] It was common for a merchant to ship dried fish to Portugal or Spain, pick up wine and oil for transport to England, and then carry finished goods from England or elsewhere back to the colony.[74] Following the introduction of the Navigation Acts in 1651, this and other patterns of trade became illegal, turning colonial merchants who sought to continue these trading patterns into de facto smugglers. Colonial authorities, many of whom either were merchants or were politically dependent on them, opposed attempts by the crown to require them to enforce the collection of duties pursuant to those acts.[75]

The fur trade only played a modest role in the colony's economy, because its rivers did not connect its centers well with the Indians who engaged in fur trapping. Timber, especially for naval purposes began to take on an increasingly important role in the economy after conflicts between England and the Dutch depleted the former's supplies of ship masts.[76]

The colony's economy depended on the success of its trade, in part because its land was not as suitable for agriculture as that of other colonies like Virginia, where large plantations could be established. The fishery was important enough that those involved in it were exempted from taxation and military service.[77] Larger communities supported craftsmen skilled in providing many of the necessities of 17th century life. Some income-producing activities, like the carding, spinning, and weaving of wool and other fibers, took place in the home.[78] Goods were transported to local markets over roads that were sometimes little more than widened Indian trails.[79] Towns were required to maintain their roads, on penalty of fines, and the colony in 1639 required special town commissions to lay out roads in a more sensible manner. Bridges were fairly uncommon, since they were expensive to maintain, and fines were imposed on their owners for the loss of life or goods if they failed. Consequently, most river crossings were made by ferry. Notable exceptions were a bridge across the Mystic River, constructed in 1638, and another over the Saugus River, whose upkeep costs were subsidized by the colony.[80]

The colonial government attempted to regulate the economy in a number of ways. On several occasions it passed laws regulating wages and prices of economically important goods and services, but most of these initiatives did not last very long.[81] Two trades, shoe making and coopering (barrel-making), were authorized to form guilds, making it possible to set price, quality and expertise levels for their work. The colony set standards governing the use of weights and measures. For example, mill operators were required to weigh grain before and after milling, to ensure the customer received back what he delivered (less the miller's percentage).[82]

The Puritan dislike of ostentation led the colony to also regulate expenditures on what it perceived as luxury items. Items of personal adornment, like lace and costly silk outerwear in particular, were frowned upon. Attempts to ban these items failed, and the colony resorted to laws restricting their display to those who could demonstrate £200 in assets.[83]

Most that arrived in the first 12 years came from two regions of England. Many of the colonists came from the county of Lincolnshire and East Anglia, northeast of London, and a large group also came from Devon, Somerset, and Dorset in the southwest of England. Although these areas provided the bulk of the migration, colonists also came other regions of England.[84] The pattern of migration often centered around specific Nonconformist clergy, who, under threat from Archbishop Laud, sought to leave England, and encouraged their flock to accompany them.[85] One characteristic unique to the New England colonies (as distinguished from some of the other English colonies) was that most of the migrants were emigrating for religious and political reasons, rather than economic ones.[86]

The preponderance of the migrants were well-to-do gentry and skilled craftsmen. They brought with them apprentices and servants, the latter of whom were sometimes in indentured servitude.[87] Few titled nobility migrated, even though some supported the migration politically and financially, and also acquired land holdings in Massachusetts and other colonies.[88] Merchants, often the children of the gentry, also represented a significant proportion of the migrants, and would play an important role in establishing the economy of the colony.[87]

With the start of the English Civil War in 1642, migration came to a comparative standstill, and some colonists even returned to England to fight for the Parliamentary cause. In the following years most of the immigrants came for economic reasons: they were merchants, seamen, and skilled craftsmen. Following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, the colony also saw in an influx of French Protestant Huguenots. During the period of the charter colony, small numbers of Scots immigrated, but these were assimilated into the colony.[89] The population of Massachusetts remained largely English in character until the 1840s.[90]

Slavery existed, but was not widespread within the colony. Some Indians captured in the Pequot War were enslaved, with those posing the greatest threat being transported to the West Indies and exchanged for goods and slaves.[91] Governor John Winthrop owned a few Indian slaves,[92] and Governor Simon Bradstreet owned two black slaves.[93] The Body of Liberties enacted in 1641 included rules governing the treatment and handling of slaves.[94] Bradstreet reported in 1680 that the colony had 100 to 120 slaves, but historian Hugh Thomas documents evidence suggesting there may have been a somewhat larger number.[95] The slave trade, however, became a significant element of the Massachusetts economy in the 18th century as its merchants became increasingly involved in it, transporting slaves from Africa and supplies from New England to the West Indies.

The Massachusetts colony was dominated by its rivers and coastline. Major rivers included the Charles and Merrimack, as well as a portion of the Connecticut River, which has been used to transport furs and timbers to Long Island Sound. Cape Ann, which juts into the Gulf of Maine, provided harbors for fishermen plying the fishing banks to the east, and Boston's harbor provided secure anchorage for seagoing commercial vessels. Development in Maine was restricted to coastal areas, and large inland areas (particularly the uplands in what is now Worcester County) remained under native control until after King Philip's War.

The colonial charter specified that the boundaries were to be from three miles (4.8 km) north of the Merrimack River to three miles south of the Charles River, and westward to the "South Sea" (i.e. the Pacific Ocean).[20] At the time, the course of neither of the rivers was known for any significant length, which eventually led to boundary disputes with the colony's neighbors.[96] Although the colony's claims were large, the practicalities of the time meant that the colony never actually controlled any land further west than the Connecticut River valley. The colony also claimed additional lands by conquest and purchase, further extending the territory it administered.

The southeastern boundary, with the Plymouth Colony, was first surveyed in 1639 and accepted by both colonies in 1640.[97] It is known in Massachusetts as the "Old Colony Line", and is still visible as the boundary between Norfolk County to the north, and Bristol and Plymouth Counties to the south.[98]

The northern boundary was originally thought to be roughly parallel to the latitude of the mouth of the Merrimack River, since the river was assumed to flow primarily west. This was found to not be the case, and in 1652 Governor Endecott sent a survey party to locate the northernmost point on the Merrimack. Guided by local Indians, the party was taken to the outlet of Lake Winnipesaukee, which the guides incorrectly claimed was the Merrimack's source. (The Merrimack's principal tributary, the Pemigewasset River, goes significantly further north.) The survey party carved lettering into a rock there (now called Endicott Rock), and its latitude was taken to be the colony's northern boundary. When extended eastward, this line was found to meet the Atlantic near Casco Bay in present-day Maine. Following this discovery, the colonial magistrates began proceedings to bring existing settlements in southern New Hampshire and Maine under its authority.[99] This extension of the colonial claim conflicted with several proprietary grants owned by the heirs of John Mason and Sir Ferdinando Gorges.[100] The Mason heirs pursued their claims in England, and the result was the formation in 1679 of the Province of New Hampshire.[101] The current boundary between Massachusetts and New Hampshire was not fixed until the 18th century. In 1678 the colony purchased the claims of the Gorges heirs, gaining control over the territory between the Piscataqua and Kennebec Rivers.[102] The colony and later the province and state retained control of Maine until it was granted statehood in the 1820.[103]

The colony performed a survey in 1642 to determine its southern boundary west to the Connecticut River.[104] This line, south of the present boundary, was protested by Connecticut, but stood until the 1690s, when Connecticut performed its own survey.[105] Most of the modern Massachusetts boundaries with its neighbors were fixed in the 18th century.[106] The most significant exception was the eastern boundary with Rhode Island, which required extensive litigation, including Supreme Court rulings, before it was finally resolved in the 19th century.[107]

Lands to the southwest in present-day Rhode Island and eastern Connecticut that had previously belonged to the Pequots were divided after the Pequot War. Claims in this area were disputed, particularly between Connecticut and Rhode Island, for many years.[108][109] Massachusetts administered Block Island and the area around present-day Stonington, Connecticut, as part of these spoils of war,[110][111] and was one of several claimants to land in what was known as Narragansett Country (roughly Washington County, Rhode Island). Massachusetts lost all of these territories in the 1660s, when Connecticut and Rhode Island received their royal charters.[112][113]

^Dates in this article are in the Julian calendar, which was then in use in England. Because the new year in that calendar fell on March 25, dates between January 1 and March 25 are written with both years to avoid confusion.